mordauk said
“since when do the plugin developers make rules for us, the theme developers?”.
Time to get off your high horse and gain a little humility. Plugin developers don’t make rules for theme developers and theme developers don’t make rules for plugin developers. The community builds rules and guidelines for everyone.

“The commuity” being the WordPress community?

Envato isn’t bound to the WordPress community’s rules, nor do they have any obligation (as far as I am aware) to adhere to the community guidelines set out by the WordPress community.

Yes the WordPress community.

If you think you can sell a WordPress product (on any market) and completely ignore the larger WP community, you will have a rude awakening one day.

DesignPuma said
3. Themes will be required to use whichever version of jQuery ships with that version of WordPress.
4. Authors are not allowed to deregister the default version of jQuery and load another one.

Whats wrong if we use the newer version of jquery?

There’s no need to do so, and it means you’re using a version of jQuery that’s not been thoroughly tested with WordPress. Considering how often WordPress updates, is there really some new feature in jQuery that you can’t wait a few months to have available? Surely not!

mordauk, I got your point. Now, let me ask you a question. Not only to you, but to all the other that think this is a progress.

Me, as a developer, I may work with different designers. I don’t like doing the same blog theme over and over again with just a different face, but I like doing niche themes. Like, a restaurant theme, a one-page theme, a real-estate one, etc. Each one of those themes has different shortcodes. One may have a simple portfolio with not so many details while maybe another portfolio theme has lots of options and stuff related to the portfolio niche.

Having one plugin globally used in all the themes simply doesn’t work. This may work for bigger companies like WooThemes, ElegantThemes that use the same principles and overall style in all the themes, but tell me how should I proceed in the above case? One plugin per theme? That’s definitely not productive and hard to maintain.

Also, the code differs from one theme to another.(the markup). One way would be to create some global shortcodes with some default behaviour and override the functions in the theme while leaving a default markup for other themes, but this doesn’t cover the creation of new shortcodes and features related to that specific theme niche.

FinalDestiny said
mordauk, I got your point. Now, let me ask you a question. Not only to you, but to all the other that think this is a progress.

Me, as a developer, I may work with different designers. I don’t like doing the same blog theme over and over again with just a different face, but I like doing niche themes. Like, a restaurant theme, a one-page theme, a real-estate one, etc. Each one of those themes has different shortcodes. One may have a simple portfolio with not so many details while maybe another portfolio theme has lots of options and stuff related to the portfolio niche.

Having one plugin globally used in all the themes simply doesn’t work. This may work for bigger companies like WooThemes, ElegantThemes that use the same principles and overall style in all the themes, but tell me how should I proceed in the above case? One plugin per theme? That’s definitely not productive and hard to maintain.

Using the same plugin over and over again actually does work exceptionally well. Just because it’s the same plugin doesn’t mean it can’t be unique.

There are many ways to turn features on/off that are provided by a plugin, and you can easily do this in your theme.

Cubell said
Authors are the second most valuable and important asset for Envato right after Buyers, if we stop making themes, they having nothing to sell and make no money.

This quote reminds me of so many people i’ve worked with in the past at various customers prior to starting my own company, including myself, who i’ve heard make a similar statements about their job, “If I quit, they’ll be screwed.” and when they finally quit… in every single instance the company continued to chug along as if nothing happened.

Unfortunately for the authors they’ve allowed themselves to be commoditized. Unlike other theme developers that built their own brands and businesses (Organic Themes, Press75, iThemes, StudioPress, WooThemes, Headway, etc.), most ThemeForest authors have placed themselves at the mercy of ThemeForest.

I say most, not all. There are a few that definitely have been able to cultivate their own brand. Themezilla for instance. Okay Themes is another. They could walk away from ThemeForest and weather the initial downturn in sales and survive in the long run. But the vast majority of ThemeForest authors? They’d be screwed if they walked away from ThemeForest.

This is what happens when you allow yourself to be commoditized.

This means you need ThemeForest MORE than ThemeForest needs you. I say more because you are replaceable. They can always find people to create and sell themes on ThemeForest.

It’s a shame that this thread has turned into a pissing match, because there are quite a few good arguments being presented on either side. On top of that, the Envato staff is doing a great job of taking everything in stride and not joining the fray.

The respondents in this thread represent some of the most popular and powerful work in the WordPress community, and it’s good to see so many bright minds come together for a discussion. On the other hand, it’s going to be impossible to get along until we all realize we’re on the same side.

Some have entered this thread intending to incite a riot, torches in hand, while have joined as riot police, waving batons around and looking for a beat down. Just once I’d like to see a WordPress related discussion that does not become a class debate, but I fear that the WordPress culture has engrained this so deeply into its nature that it might be an impossible request.

I’d like to think that discussions like this, if we let them run their course, will ultimately lead to a better and more advanced community here, which will help us all make more money. I believe that Envato has their heart in the right place, as do the authors that have helped Envato reach its current summit. At the same time, I do hope that Envato maintains its unique voice in the end, because despite being the red headed step child, a lot of people value it for that very same reason.

To summarize my opinion as an author (and possibly my last post to this thread) is that I agree with all the new requirements. I only disagree with the need to make plugins for extra functionality (shortcodes), as I fear that this is one of the big attractions for buyers, as to them a theme here means that they can expect nice features and that they are seamlessly integrated without the need to install extra things, and taking this away could create a negative response from buyers. And as an author, I would feel that my end-product would “feel” cheaper due to the worse user experience.

FinalDestiny said
mordauk, I got your point. Now, let me ask you a question. Not only to you, but to all the other that think this is a progress.

Me, as a developer, I may work with different designers. I don’t like doing the same blog theme over and over again with just a different face, but I like doing niche themes. Like, a restaurant theme, a one-page theme, a real-estate one, etc. Each one of those themes has different shortcodes. One may have a simple portfolio with not so many details while maybe another portfolio theme has lots of options and stuff related to the portfolio niche.

Having one plugin globally used in all the themes simply doesn’t work. This may work for bigger companies like WooThemes, ElegantThemes that use the same principles and overall style in all the themes, but tell me how should I proceed in the above case? One plugin per theme? That’s definitely not productive and hard to maintain.

Using the same plugin over and over again actually does work exceptionally well. Just because it’s the same plugin doesn’t mean it can’t be unique.

There are many ways to turn features on/off that are provided by a plugin, and you can easily do this in your theme.

Every one of those themes uses the exact same plugin to provide 99% of the functionality, yet each theme can still remain unique.

Whether you are using WooCommerce, another GPL or commercial plugin, or your own custom plugin, you can do the same thing.

You didn’t understand my question. Let’s say I’m just starting and I’m creating a plugin for the first theme. But the second theme is a real estate theme. And real estate themes have their own features and shortcodes, different than the first theme(that doesn’t need the real estate features). And maybe the real estate theme uses the pricing tables in a different way than the first theme. What’s to be done then? I’m talking about shortcodes here.

Since we’re not plugin developers, we can’t create an extremely complex plugin to cover, for example, all the portfolio possibilities, we only create what we need for a specific theme. When a new portfolio theme comes in the discussion, we re-review what we have in the current plugin and discover we need some new features / functions / etc. So in the end we basically need a new plugin for each theme, which is extremely bad and very hard to maintain.

FinalDestiny said
mordauk, I got your point. Now, let me ask you a question. Not only to you, but to all the other that think this is a progress.

Me, as a developer, I may work with different designers. I don’t like doing the same blog theme over and over again with just a different face, but I like doing niche themes. Like, a restaurant theme, a one-page theme, a real-estate one, etc. Each one of those themes has different shortcodes. One may have a simple portfolio with not so many details while maybe another portfolio theme has lots of options and stuff related to the portfolio niche.

Having one plugin globally used in all the themes simply doesn’t work. This may work for bigger companies like WooThemes, ElegantThemes that use the same principles and overall style in all the themes, but tell me how should I proceed in the above case? One plugin per theme? That’s definitely not productive and hard to maintain.

Using the same plugin over and over again actually does work exceptionally well. Just because it’s the same plugin doesn’t mean it can’t be unique.

There are many ways to turn features on/off that are provided by a plugin, and you can easily do this in your theme.

Every one of those themes uses the exact same plugin to provide 99% of the functionality, yet each theme can still remain unique.

Whether you are using WooCommerce, another GPL or commercial plugin, or your own custom plugin, you can do the same thing.

You didn’t understand my question. Let’s say I’m just starting and I’m creating a plugin for the first theme. But now I’m creating a real estate theme. And real estate themes have their own features and shortcodes, different than the first theme(that doesn’t need the real estate features). And maybe the real estate theme uses the pricing tables in a different way than the first theme. What’s to be done then? I’m talking about shortcodes here.

Since we’re not plugin developers, we can’t create an extremely complex plugin to cover, for example, all the portfolio possibilities, we only create what we need for a specific theme. When a new portfolio theme comes in the discussion, we re-review what we have in the current plugin and discover we need some new features / functions / etc. So in the end we basically need a new plugin for each theme, which is extremely bad and very hard to maintain.

If you learn to use filters and actions, it’s actually pretty simple. Yes, you’ll have to learn some new tricks, but, and I speak from experience, it will make theme/plugin development super simple going forward.

kriskorn said
Do you realize that Japh and Collis have done that to Envato’s reputation themselves and you are still blaming the authors ? Authors have followed the guidelines that Envato has set.

You are 100% correct and i’ve never publicly said otherwise which is why whenever i’ve called out a ThemeForest theme for having poor code on Twitter, etc. which I have done MANY MANY times over the last few years, i’ve always called out ThemeForest and Envato and not the specific theme author.

Envato itself deserves a share of the blame. But at least Japh, Collis and Envato as a whole are trying to correct the mistakes of the past by bringing more standards, best practices and order to what is sold on ThemeForest. I commend Japh, Collis and Envato for taking the steps necessary to clean up ThemeForest.